Lawmakers in Crimea Move Swiftly to Split From Ukraine

People waved Russian flags at Lenin Square on Monday in Simferopol, the Crimean capital.

Vasily Maximov / Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and ALAN COWELL

March 17, 2014

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — In the face of stern international criticism a day after a disputed referendum, the Parliament of the breakaway republic of Crimea declared its independence from Ukraine on Monday, formally asking Russia to annex it and moving swiftly to cement its rupture with the authorities in Kiev.

Officials in Simferopol, the regional capital, jubilantly announced that almost 97 percent of voters on Sunday had supported secession.

Hours later, in the first Western response, both the Obama administration and foreign ministers from the 28-nation European Union announced that they had imposed travel bans and asset freezes on people they blamed for the moves to wrest Crimea from Ukrainian control.

The European ministers did not immediately identify the 21 names on their list, which is most likely the first stage in an escalating schedule of sanctions. But an executive order signed by President Obama targeted several named officials in President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle, and the White House threatened to go after more if Russia did not back down.

Diplomats said the European measures would affect 10 people in Russia, eight Crimeans and three Russian military officers connected to the Black Sea Fleet, which is based in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. The tally fell short of a more expansive list supported by the United States and more hawkish European nations but nonetheless was the first time the European Union had adopted economic sanctions against Russia.

Moscow has embraced the result of the voting Sunday, but Mr. Putin has not formally declared his intent to annex the strategic territory.

A couple walked past police officers in riot gear on Monday in Simferopol.

Uriel Sinai for The New York Times

The Russian leader was scheduled to make a speech on developments in the region on Tuesday.

On Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a lengthy statement outlining its proposals for resolving Ukraine’s political crisis, saying that Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov had presented the plans to his counterparts in Europe and the United States a week earlier.

The proposals — including the recognition of Crimea’s right “to determine its own destiny” — contradicted many American, European and Ukrainian positions, making it unlikely that Russia would win broad diplomatic support even though it endorsed the creation of a “contact group” of diplomats to mediate.

The ministry called for a return to the agreement of Feb. 21 arranged by three European foreign ministers, although it has been overtaken by events. It called for a national assembly to draft a new constitution creating a federal system of government that would shift significant power to the regions “reflecting the cultural and historical specificity of each of them.” The document also urged that Russian be made a second official language.

In Simferopol, the Crimean capital, celebrations continued Monday and officials declared a day off from work. Legislators, however, were moving assertively to set the break from Ukraine in motion, announcing that the authorities in the Ukrainian capital had no power in Crimea.

The legislators adopted a resolution declaring that the laws of Ukraine no longer applied to Crimea and that state funds and all other state property of Ukraine in Crimea had been transferred to their new entity.

The Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was renamed the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, and legislators formally appealed to Russia to accept Crimea as part of the Russian Federation.

In Sevastopol, the City Council took similar steps, voting to confirm the referendum result.

Without questions or debate, the Council passed a unanimous resolution to request that Sevastopol become part of the Russian Federation as a “city of federal significance,” a status now held by Moscow and St. Petersburg that grants special administrative and budgetary privileges.

Video On Sunday, the referendum on the status of Crimea divided the population of the multicultural region.

Meanwhile, a stalemate continued at military bases around Crimea where Ukrainian forces have been surrounded and blocked by Russian troops but are refusing to surrender.

Highlighting the tensions as both the West and Russia weighed their next moves, the Parliament in Kiev approved a presidential decree authorizing the call-up of 20,000 reservists to the armed forces and another 20,000 to a newly formed national guard. The interim government in Kiev also increased the military budget with an emergency allotment of about $680 million that will be disbursed over the next three months.

Though it signaled a muscular military stance, the significance of the call-ups was unclear as the Ukrainian government had announced a general mobilization of reserves two weeks earlier.

The Ukrainian defense minister, Ihor Tenyukh, said Monday that he had negotiated a truce with the commanders of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the Russian Defense Ministry, affecting Ukrainian military units stationed in Crimea and surrounded by Russian troops wearing uniforms without insignia.

The truce will extend through March 21, he said, and will allow the Ukrainian military to resupply bases, which have been running low on food. Most important, the truce appears to reduce the possibility of an immediate confrontation over any of the bases if Russia formally annexes the peninsula in the coming days.

The European foreign ministers meeting in Brussels made clear that they were not considering a military response. “We are not looking at military options here,” Foreign Secretary William Hague of Britain said in a radio interview. “This is not about a Crimean war.”

The referendum on Sunday — in which 96.77 percent of voters supported breaking from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation — was greeted as a triumph in Moscow on Monday, and lawmakers there promised to move quickly to adopt legislation to absorb Crimea into the Russian Federation. “Crimea returns to Russia!” a headline in Komsomolskaya Pravda said, while Nezavisimaya Gazeta declared that “Kiev lost Crimea.”

Mr. Putin told President Obama on Sunday that the referendum in Crimea was legal and cited the independence of Kosovo — which Russia has not recognized — as the precedent for Crimea’s secession, the Kremlin said in a statement.

“The referendum was organized in such a way as to guarantee Crimea’s population the possibility to freely express their will and exercise their right to self-determination,” the Kremlin’s statement on the latest of a series of conversations between the two leaders said.

Mr. Putin also continued to raise the issue of violence and protests in other parts of Ukraine, which have stoked fears that Russia could move forces beyond Crimea.

He told Mr. Obama that “the current authorities in Kiev have so far failed to demonstrate the ability and desire to rein in the ultranationalist and radical groups that are destabilizing the situation in the country and terrorizing ordinary people, including the Russian-speaking population and Russia’s compatriots,” the Kremlin statement said.

Crimea’s new prime minister, Sergei Aksyonov, told Russian state television that a delegation from the region would arrive in Moscow to begin discussions on the process of annexation. The deputy speaker of Russia’s lower house of Parliament, Sergei Neverov, said that Russian lawmakers would act shortly.

“The high voter turnout and the vast support for Crimea’s accession to Russia speak for themselves,” he was quoted by Interfax as saying.

One of the ministers attending the Brussels meeting, Sebastian Kurz of Austria, gave a strong indication that the punitive European measures would not initially reach into the highest echelons of Russia’s powerful energy companies, which are close to the Kremlin.

Police in riot gear on Monday in Simferopol.

Uriel Sinai for The New York Times

In a radio interview, Mr. Kurz said the referendum would trigger an array of measures including visa bans and the freezing of assets held by political and military figures who orchestrated Russia’s intervention in Crimea, Reuters reported.

Asked whether the list would include the heads of the energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft, as reported on Friday in Germany, Mr. Kurz replied, “This is not expected at this time.”

Germany on Monday forcefully demanded that European observers be dispatched “as soon as possible” to prevent further destabilization in eastern Ukraine and reiterated that Berlin and its European partners considered Sunday’s referendum illegal and its results null and void.

While calling for a “clear reaction” from the European Union, and stressing that Germany supports sanctions, the government spokesman, Steffen Seibert, indicated that Germany — which stands to lose perhaps the most if sanctions are imposed on Russia — is still pursuing diplomatic avenues.

Mr. Putin gave a “positive assessment” on Sunday when Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the dispatch of observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Mr. Seibert said. Berlin hopes that the 59-nation organization, based in Vienna, will decide on the dispatch of such observers on Monday, Mr. Seibert added.

Asked whether Ms. Merkel, who has spoken at least five times with Mr. Putin in the past two weeks, still trusts the Russian leader, Mr. Seibert demurred, noting only that Mr. Putin, as head of state, was the man to deal with.

“Russia has not proved to be a partner for stability” over Ukraine, Mr. Seibert noted. “On the contrary, it has exploited the weakness of its neighbor.” One example, he suggested, was the conduct of the referendum “under the impression of a massive presence of military and paramilitary forces.”

Stirring up further trouble in eastern Ukraine, he added, is “dangerous and unacceptable.”

Correction: March 18, 2014

An earlier version of the caption for a picture with this article referred incorrectly to Simferopol. It is the capital of the Ukrainian region of Crimea, not the capital of Ukraine.